Zendesk vs Intercom: An Honest Comparison in 2024

Zendesk allows the integration of 1300 apps ranging from billing apps, marketing tools, and other software, adding overall to the value of the business. It also excels in the silo approach in a company and allows easy access to information to anyone in the company through this integration. It allows businesses to automate repetitive tasks, such as ticket routing and in-built responses, freeing up time for support agents to deal with more crucial cases requiring more agent attention. This automation enhances support teams’ productivity as they do not have to spend too much responding to similar complaints they have already dealt with.

Many businesses choose to work with Intercom because of its focus on personalization and flexibility, allowing companies to completely customize their customer service experience. The company’s products include a ticketing system, live chat software, knowledge base software, and a customer satisfaction survey tool. Zendesk also offers a number of integrations with third-party applications.

Intercom offers a wide range of integrations with other popular tools and platforms, allowing businesses to connect their customer support with other systems. Zendesk also offers integrations, but the ecosystem may not be as extensive as Intercom’s. Intercom provides real-time visitor tracking, allowing businesses to see who is currently browsing their website or using their app. This feature enables support agents to proactively engage with customers and provide assistance. Intercom offers a comprehensive customer database with detailed profiles, enabling businesses to gather and analyze customer data easily.

Research by Zoho reports that customer relationship management (CRM) systems can help companies triple lead conversion rates. Those same tools also increase customer retention by 27% while saving 23% on sales and marketing costs. Hivers offers round-the-clock proactive support across all its plans, ensuring that no matter the time or issue, expert assistance is always available. This 24/7 support model is designed to provide continuous, real-time solutions to clients, enhancing the overall reliability and responsiveness of Hivers’ services. Intercom actively enhances its analytics capabilities by leveraging AI to forecast customer behavior.

Intercom’s CRM utility is a solid foundation for managing customer relationships and sales in one platform. When it comes to utility, Zendesk’s utility may not be as robust as a pure CRM solution. However, customers do have the option to go to Zendesk Sell for a more robust experience. If you’re still on the fence about which platform to choose, consider exploring Tidio as a strong alternative. Tidio stands out with its advanced AI-powered chatbots and seamless automated workflows, making customer interactions efficient and personalized.

Features: Zendesk vs Intercom

Both Zendesk and Intercom offer automation features to streamline workflows and improve efficiency, but the way they do it is different. Integrations are the best way to enhance the toolkit of your apps by connecting them for interoperable actions and features. Both Zendesk and Intercom have integration libraries, and you can also use a connecting tool like Zapier for added integrations and add-ons.

Zendesk also has an Answer Bot, instantly taking your knowledge base game to the next level. It can automatically suggest relevant articles for agents to share during business hours with clients, reducing your support agents’ workload. Zendesk provides its partners with quality support and educational resources, including online training and certification programs, helping turn any salesperson into a Zendesk expert. Conversely, some Pipedrive users have issues working with Pipedrive, with users describing their support and onboarding experiences as slow and limited.

It works on top of your inbox and offers essential helpdesk functionalities. So, the actual pricing of Intercom would depend on whether or not you’re going to need their AI features – the AI Copilot and AI Agent. The AI Copilot is limited to assisting ten conversations per support agent and for anything more, it costs $35 per month per agent. Moreover, for users who require more dedicated and personalized support, Zendesk charges an additional premium.

However, if you are looking for a robust messaging solution with customer support features, go for Intercom. Its intuitive messenger can help your business boost engagement and improve sales and marketing efforts. You can also set up interactive product tours to highlight new features in-product and explain how they work. Both Zendesk Messaging and Intercom Messenger offer live chat features and AI-enabled chatbots for 24/7 support to customers.

You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. The dashboard of Zendesk is sleek, simple, and highly responsive, offering a seamless experience for managing customer interactions. Yes, you can continue using Intercom as the consumer-facing CRM experience, but integrate with Zendesk for customer service in the back end for more customer support functionality. These include chatbot automation features, customer segmentation, and targeted SMS messaging to reach the right audience efficiently. The Zendesk marketplace hosts over 1,500 third-party apps and integrations.

However, the right fit for your business will depend on your particular needs and budget. If you’re looking for a comprehensive solution with lots of features and integrations, then Zendesk would be a good choice. On the other hand, if you need something that is more tailored to your customer base and is less expensive, then Intercom might be a better fit. Intercom is a customer relationship management (CRM) software company that provides a suite of tools for managing customer interactions. The company was founded in 2011 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Intercom’s products are used by over 25,000 customers, from small tech startups to large enterprises.

Supercharge customer support

AI is integral to customer relationship management software and facilitates consumer interactions. AI helps businesses gain detailed insight into consumer data in real-time. It also helps promote automation in routine tasks by automating repetitive processes and helps agents save time and errors. Its messaging also has real-time notifications and automated responses, enhancing customer communication.

Intercom’s chatbot feels a little more robust than Zendesk’s (though it’s worth noting that some features are only available at the Engage and Convert tiers). You can set office hours, live chat with logged-in users via their user profiles, and set up a chatbot. Customization is more nuanced than Zendesk’s, but it’s still really straightforward to implement. You can opt for code via JavaScript or Rails or even integrate directly with the likes of Google Tag Manager, WordPress, or Shopify. Intercom, on the other hand, was built for business messaging, so communication is one of their strong suits. Combine that with their prowess in automation and sales solutions, and you’ve got a really strong product that can handle myriad customer relationship needs.

Zendesk and Intercom are robust tools with a wide range of customer service and CRM features. For small companies and startups, Intercom offers a Starter plan — with a balanced suite of features from each of the solutions below — at $74 per month per user, billed annually. You can create an omnichannel CRM suite with a mix of productivity, collaboration, eCommerce, CRM, analytics, email marketing, social media, and other tools. Both app stores include many popular integrations, such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Mailchimp, and Zapier. Now that we’ve discussed the customer service-focused features of Zendesk and Intercom, let’s turn our attention to how these platforms can support sales and marketing efforts. When you onboard a customer support platform, it’s important to consider the level of support the vendor offers.

The platform was created to provide a simple and effective way for businesses to manage customer support tickets. Over the years, Zendesk has expanded its offerings to include features such as live chat, knowledge base, and customer feedback. Intercom is a customer messaging platform that enables businesses to engage with customers through personalized and real-time communication. Intercom, on the other hand, offers more advanced automation features than Zendesk.

Intelligent automated ticketing helps streamline customer service management and handling inquiries while reducing manual work. Zendesk provides comprehensive security and compliance features, ensuring customer data privacy. This includes secure login options like SAML or JWT SSO (single sign-on) and native content redaction for sensitive information. We also adhere to numerous industry standards and regulations, such as HIPAA, SOC2, ISO 27001, HDS, FedRAMP LI-SaaS, ISO 27018, and ISO 27701. As a result, customers can implement the help desk software quickly—without the need for developers—and see a faster return on investment. Plus, our transparent pricing doesn’t have hidden fees or endless add-ons, so customers know exactly what they’re paying for and can calculate the total cost of ownership ahead of time.

Not to mention its advanced reporting capabilities, customizable dashboards, and seamless mobile app experience for an always-on approach to service. Today, amid the rise of omnichannel customer service, it offers a centralized location to manage interactions via email, live chat, social media, or voice calls. Zendesk boasts robust reporting and analytics tools, plus a dedicated workforce management system. With custom correlation and attribution, you can dive deep into the root cause behind your metrics. We also provide real-time and historical reporting dashboards so you can take action at the moment and learn from past trends.

Intercom’s native mobile apps are good for iOS, Android, React Native, and Cordova, while Zendesk only has mobile apps for iPhones, iPads, and Android devices. As for the category of voice and phone features, Zendesk is a clear winner. Zendesk Support has voicemail, text messages, and embedded voice, and it displays the phone number on the widget. What better way to start a Zendesk vs. Intercom than to compare their features? It also offers a Proactive Support Plus as an Add-on with push notifications, a series campaign builder, news items, and more.

While its integrations are not as far-reaching as Zendesk’s, it seamlessly works with modern communication and business tools, like WhatsApp and the most prominent CRMS. Not to mention marketing and sales tools, like Salesforce, Hubspot, and Google Analytics. Intercom is an all-in-one solution, and compared to Zendesk, Intercom has a less intuitive design and can be complicated for new users to learn. It also offers a confusing pricing structure and fewer integrations, making it less scalable and cost-effective.

Zendesk excels in traditional ticket management and offers a robust set of feature. On the other hand, Intercom’s cutting-edge AI capabilities and in-app messaging features help companies provide a more intuitive and on-the-go customer support. According to the Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report 2023, 78 percent of business leaders want to combine their customer service and sales data. The Zendesk sales CRM integrates seamlessly with the Zendesk Suite, our top-of-the-line customer service software. Unlike Zendesk, Pipedrive is limited to third-party integrations and doesn’t connect with native customer support software. Zendesk was founded in 2007 by Mikkel Svane, Morten Primdahl, and Alexander Aghassipour.

Currently based in Albuquerque, NM, Bryce Emley holds an MFA in Creative Writing from NC State and nearly a decade of writing and editing experience. When he isn’t writing content, poetry, or creative nonfiction, he enjoys traveling, baking, playing music, reliving his barista days in his own kitchen, camping, and being bad at carpentry. Luca Micheli is a serial tech entrepreneur with one exited company and a passion for bootstrap digital projects.

Messagely also provides you with a shared inbox so anyone from your team can follow up with your users, regardless of who the user was in contact with first. And while many other chatbots take forever to set up, you can set up your first chatbot in under five minutes. You don’t have to pay per contact on your database, and you there are many free features you can use. You can also contact Zendesk support 24/7, whereas Intercom support only has live agents during business hours. It’s divided into about 20 topics with dozens of articles each, so navigating through it can be complicated.

After this live chat software comparison, you’ll get a better picture of what’s better for your business. Zendesk’s user interface is also modern and user-friendly but with a slightly different design aesthetic than Intercom. The dashboard is highly customizable, allowing users to access the features they use most frequently easily.

From there, you can include FAQs, announcements, and article guides and then save them into pre-set lists for your customers to explore. Zendesk also packs some pretty potent tools into their platform, so you can empower your agents to do what they do with less repetition. Agents can use basic automation (like auto-closing tickets or setting auto-responses), apply list organization to stay on top of their tasks, or set up triggers to keep tickets moving automatically. I tested both options (using Zendesk’s Suite Professional trial and Intercom’s Support trial) and found clearly defined differences between the two. Here’s what you need to know about Zendesk vs. Intercom as customer support and relationship management tools. Your agents will love the seamless assistance Aura AI provides throughout the entire customer interaction.

• Intercom, on the other hand, focuses on automating tasks that help improve customer engagement.
• Instead, using it and setting it up is very easy, and very advanced chatbots and predictive tools are included to boost your customer service.
• The platform was created to provide a simple and effective way for businesses to manage customer support tickets.
• Grow faster with done-for-you automation, tailored optimization strategies, and custom limits.

Zendesk pricing is divided between a customer support product called “Zendesk for support”, and a fully-fledged CRM called “Zendesk for sales”. Depending on your needs, you can set up Intercom on your website or mobile app and add your automations. Setting up Intercom help centers is also very easy and intuitive, with no previous knowledge required. Picking customer service software to run your business is not a decision you make lightly. With both tools, you can also use support bots to automatically suggest specific articles, track customers’ ratings, and localize help center content to serve your customers in their native language.

These plans are not inclusive of the add-ons or access to all integrations. Once you add them all to the picture, their existing plans can turn out to be quite expensive. Zendesk has also introduced its chatbot to help its clients send automated answers to some frequently asked questions to stay ahead in the competitive marketplace.

The customer journey timeline provides a clear view of customer activities, helping you understand behaviors and tailor your responses accordingly. Not to brag 😏, but we specifically developed our platform to address the shortcomings intercom vs. zendesk in the current market. By going with Customerly for your customer service needs, you can get the best of both worlds (Zendesk and Intercom), plus some extra features and benefits you haven’t even thought of, yet.

This way, your clients will never have to repeat themselves or get frustrated because their new representative doesn’t know their background. However, if you’re looking for a streamlined, all-in-one messaging platform, there is no better option than Messagely. Zendesk, on the other hand, has revamped its security since its security breach in 2016. With Zendesk, you can anticipate customer questions, allowing for shorter reply periods.

This makes it challenging to customize the software as your business grows. Furthermore, data on customer reviews, installation numbers, and ecommerce integrations is not readily available. It provides a real-time feed and historical data, so agents can respond instantly to consumer queries, as well as learn from past CX trends.

• Before choosing the customer support software, it is crucial to consider the size of the business.
• They have offices all around the world including countries such as Mexico City, Tokyo, New York, Paris, Singapore, São Paulo, London, and Dublin.
• Customer service systems like Zendesk and Intercom should provide a simple workflow builder as well as many pre-built automations which can be used right out of the box.
• Zendesk and Intercom also both offer analytics and reporting capabilities that allow businesses to analyze and monitor customer agents’ productivity.
• Zendesk and Intercom offer a free trial of 14 days, but you will eventually have to choose once the trial ends.

We need a powerful chat tool that can enable immediate engagement, have some basic automation, and allows users to drop in. Again, Zendesk has surpassed the number of reviewers when compared to Intercom. Some of the highly-rated features include ticket creation user experience, email to case, and live chat reporting. When you see pricing plans starting for $79/month, you should get a clear understanding of how expensive other plans can become for your business. What’s worse, Intercom doesn’t offer a free trial to its prospect to help them test the product before onboarding with their services. Instead, they offer a product demo when prospects reach out to learn more about their pricing structure.

The highlight of Zendesk’s ticketing software is its omnichannel-ality (omnichannality?). Whether agents are facing customers via chat, email, social media, or good old-fashioned phone, they can keep it all confined to a single, easy-to-navigate dashboard. That not only saves them the headache of having to constantly switch between dashboards while streamlining resolution processes—it also leads to better customer and agent experience overall. While not included with its customer service suite, it offers a full-fledged standalone CRM called Zendesk Sell. While it’s a separate product with separate costs, it does integrate seamlessly with Zendesk’s customer service platform. Traditional ticketing systems are one of the major customer service bottlenecks companies want to solve with automation.

This makes it a strong choice for businesses prioritizing customer engagement. Core features include automated support powered by a knowledge base, a streamlined ticketing system built around messaging, and a powerful inbox to centralize all customer queries. In this article, we comprehensively do a comparison of Zendesk vs Intercom, examining their key features, benefits, and industry use cases.

It also supports email and other channels – like Whatsapp, SMS, social media channels and more, through integrations. But its core strength lies in providing a seamless, conversational experience for customers. Zendesk wins the major category of help desk and ticketing system software. It lets customers reach out via messaging, a live chat tool, voice, and social media. Zendesk supports teams that can then field these issues from a nice unified dashboard.

Zendesk’s User Interface

Intercom, on the other hand, is designed to be more of a complete solution for sales, marketing, and customer relationship nurturing. That being said, while both platforms offer extensive features, they can be costly, especially for smaller enterprises. Ultimately, your choice should reflect whether your priority is comprehensive customer support (Zendesk) or a blend of CRM and sales support (Intercom).

You can configure it to assign tickets using various methods, such as skills, load balancing, and round-robin to ensure efficient handling. In the process, it streamlines collaboration between team members as well as a unified interface to manage all help resources. If you want to test Intercom vs Zendesk before deciding on a tool for good, they both provide free 14-day trials.

This has helped to make Zendesk one of the most popular customer service software platforms on the market. The Zendesk chat tool has most of the necessary features, like shortcuts (saved responses), automated triggers, and live chat analytics. Founded in 2007, Zendesk started as a ticketing tool for customer success teams. Later, they started adding all kinds of other features, like live chat for customer conversations.

When choosing a customer support tool, it’s essential to consider what other users have to say about their experience with the platform. Intercom and Zendesk offer robust integration capabilities that allow businesses to streamline their workflow and improve customer support. Choosing Intercom or Zendesk will depend on your specific needs and requirements. Intercom also offers an API enabling businesses to build custom integrations with their tools.

The last thing you want is your sales data or the contact information of potential customers to end up in the wrong hands. Because of this, you’ll want to make sure you’re selecting a cloud-based CRM, like Zendesk, with strong security features. Zendesk meets global security and privacy https://chat.openai.com/ compliance standards and includes features like single sign-on (SSO) to help provide protection against cyberattacks and keep your data safe. We sell a high-touch, high ASP product (caskets) and have scaled to where we’re adding several more customer service agents to our company.

On the other hand, Zendesk’s customer database may not offer the same level of depth and richness as Intercom. If you are looking for more integration options and budget is not an issue, Intercom can be the perfect live chat solution for your business. It is also ideal for businesses who are searching for conversational chatbot functionality. Their AI-powered chatbot can enable your business to boost engagement and improve marketing efforts in real-time. Intercom’s live chat reports aren’t just offering what your customers are doing or whether they are satisfied with your services.

On the other hand, Zendesk’s customer support includes a knowledge base that’s very intuitive and easy to navigate. It divides all articles into a few main topics so you can quickly find the one you’re looking for. It also includes a list of common questions you can browse through at the bottom of the knowledge base home page so you can find answers to common issues.

Now that we know a little about both tools, it is time to make an in-depth analysis and identify which one of these will be perfect for your business. In conclusion, Intercom and Zendesk have implemented robust security measures to protect their clients’ data. Customers can feel confident that their data is secure when using either platform. Guru GPT integrates your company’s internal knowledge with ChatGPT, making it easy to access and use information from Guru and connected apps. Before you make your choice, check out Messagely’s features and compare them to discover which platform is best for you. While both Zendesk and Intercom are great and robust platforms, none of them are able to provide you with the same value Messagely gives you at such an  affordable price.

You can create articles, share them internally, group them for users, and assign them as responses for bots—all pretty standard fare. Intercom can even integrate with Zendesk and other sources to import past help center content. I just found Zendesk’s help center to be slightly better integrated into their workflows and more customizable. Using this, agents can chat across teams within a ticket via email, Slack, or Zendesk’s ticketing system.

Zendesk excels in its ticketing system, offering users an intuitive platform for collaboration among support agents. Its robust workflows streamline the ticket resolution system and efficiently handle all customer complaints. It also enables agents to perform customized workflow management, assign tickets to the right agent for request handling, and track the ticket’s progress. In today’s business world, customer service is fast-paced, and customers have higher expectations. To enhance customer satisfaction, businesses must equip their teams with customer support solutions and customer service software. But they also add features like automatic meeting booking (in the Convert package), and their custom inbox rules and workflows just feel a little more, well, custom.

Say what you will, but Intercom’s design and overall user experience leave all its competitors far behind. Like Zendesk, Intercom offers its Operator bot, which automatically suggests relevant articles to clients right in a chat widget. The right sales CRM can help your team close more deals and boost your business. If that’s not detailed enough, then surely their visitor browsing details will leave you surprised.

Powered by AI, Intercom’s Fin chatbot is purportedly capable of solving 50% of all queries autonomously — in multiple languages. At the same time, Fin AI Copilot background support to agents, acting as a personal, real-time AI assistant for dealing with inquiries. You can test any of HelpCrunch’s pricing plans for free for 14 days and see our tools in action immediately. To sum up this Intercom vs Zendesk battle, the latter is a great support-oriented tool that will be a good choice for big teams with various departments. Intercom feels modern and is more client-success-oriented, but it can be too costly for smaller companies. Besides, the prices differ depending on the company’s size and specific needs.

However, you’ll likely end up paying more for Zendesk, and in-app messenger and other advanced customer communication tools will not be included. Both Zendesk and Intercom have knowledge bases to help customers get the most out of their platforms. Although it can be pricey, Zendesk’s platform is a very robust one, with powerful reporting and insight tools, a large number of integrations, and excellent scalability features. HubSpot helps seamlessly integrate customer service tools that you and your team already leverage.

Intercom provides an extensive range of automation tools and workflows, allowing businesses to automate repetitive tasks and streamline their customer support processes. In contrast, while Zendesk does offer some automation capabilities, it may not be as robust and customizable as Intercom. Intercom offers an integrated knowledge base functionality to its user base. Using the existing knowledge base functionality, they can display self-help articles in the chat window before the customer approaches your team for support. You can create these knowledge base articles in your target audience’s native language as their software is multilingual. This makes it an ideal choice for businesses looking to engage customers directly within their product, app or website.

Yes, Zendesk has an Intercom integration that you can find in the Zendesk Marketplace—it’s free to install. So, you can get the best of Chat GPT both worlds without choosing between Intercom or Zendesk. Check out our chart that compares the capabilities of Zendesk vs. Intercom.

With Intercom, you can keep track of your customers and what they do on your website in real time. Like Zendesk, Intercom allows you to chat with online visitors and assist with their issues. Zendesk chat allows you to talk with your visitors in real time through a small chat bar at the bottom of your site.

Additionally, you can trigger incoming messages to automatically assign an agent and create dashboards to monitor the team’s performance on live chat. Zendesk takes the slight lead here because it offers some advanced help desk features, which Intercom does not. If ticket management and workflow optimization are your primary concerns, Zendesk’s automation capabilities might be a better fit. However, if you’re looking to improve your customer’s user journey with personalized conversations, Intercom’s automation features and AI assistant are likely to be beneficial. One stand out automation feature is its co-pilot, also known as Fin AI Copilot. It is an AI-powered assistant that functions as a knowledge base search tool, equipping agents with instant answers when they interact with customers, directly within the Intercom inbox.